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Ivy
Ivy was the beta of the Northwood pack, and was usually praised as their primary strategist. She was described as having the appearance of a classic grey wolf; her coat was a combination of grey, brown, and white, and her eyes a dark green. She possessed a slender build that allowed her to be very talented at stealth. Pre-series Ivy was born to the Alphas of the Northwood pack, who she never knew as they died when she was very young. She was nursed and raised by Sky, along with her littermates - Snowflake, sister, and Timber, brother - as well as Willow and Sea, who she would consider to be more of sisters than just friends. Ivy was always an unsually serious pup, and she also possessed a very good mind for strategy. When, at a very young age, she would engage in games with the other pups, she would always use logic to win. She was also extremely difficult for Sea to prank, as she would see what was coming and avoid it. (This, of course, only brought out the competitive streak in Sea, who used Ivy as her primary pranking target.) She would often accompany Sky and Timber to her brother's extra hunting lessons, claiming that she was interested in how her brother fared. If she really was interested, however, she had an odd way of showing it, as she would often go elsewhere and leave them to it. Book One Ivy made her first appearance when she walked up to Sky and Timber, who were in the middle of a training session, and calmly stated that she had heard Snowflake, Willow and Sea close to a nearby stream. Sky went into an immediate panic, instructing Ivy and Timber to return to the den. They did, and remained there, waiting. Sky soon brought Snowflake, Willow, and Sea and instructed them to remain as well, then left again. The rest of the family was tense and panicked - except for Snowflake, who was attemping to calm them - but Ivy took it in stride. She showed very little reaction or emotion throughout the entire event; even when Willow returned, informing them that Sky was dead and they needed to flee, Ivy behaved in an almost callous matter, snapping at her brother Timber when he remained paralyzed by fear. During the pack's first night away from the cave they had grown up in, Ivy was too restless to sleep. She went out to wander around, and encountered a strange wolf lurking nearby. She knocked him unconscious and returned to the large tree they had been sleeping over, where she awaited dawn. When the sky began to lighten, she was approached by Timber, the first to awaken. He proposed that they might have started to become a pack, and that maybe they should assign positions. Ivy thought about it as the rest of the pack began to stir; by the time she was awake, she had made her decision and brought the subject up to the rest of the pack. In a short conversation, Snowflake was chosen as Alpha female by process of elimination. She chose Ivy as her Beta, saying that her skills as a strategist and planner made her perfect for the position. Ivy accepted it in stride, then told her that she might as well make her first decision as Alpha female then. She took her to see the wolf she had captured during the night and left the decision of his fate to Snowflake. They both talked to the captive, and soon learned that he was not a Darkwood wolf, as Ivy had assumed, but a loner who had just left his pack in the mountains and was seeking a new one. He gave his name as Storm. After Ivy said that she didn't think he was lying, Snowflake offered him entry to the pack, which he accepted. Ivy, though holding a certain neutral liking of him, refused to trust him entirely, although she was generally much less open about her distrust than Timber. She was receptive to his idea of going to the valley. Ivy was the main one in charge of their route, as she was doing her best to throw the Darkwood wolves off their trail. She thought she was succeeding; however, one night she was awoken by Sea, who, along with Storm, had detected a Darkwood wolf lurking around where they were sleeping. Ivy came out to join them, and they were confronted by Poison, who informed them that their attempts to evade Darkwood had been in vain; he then left, his goal accomplished. Ivy decided that part of the problem was their travelling as a large group, and convinced the rest of the pack that they should split up, with one group continuing straight north to their valley, and the other to a nearby river that would lead them there. She chose to go with Sea and Storm to the river, and during this part of the journey, began to trust the newcomer more. She was impressed by his fishing skills, which he promised to share with her at a later point. Once they arrived at the valley, Ivy was not excepted from the peace that the pack found. She spent the next couple of months training Timber to fight, as she believed that he should be able to defend himself better. She also gave him some hunting lessons later on. She was a good teacher who made good progress with her brother, and their bond increased furthur during this time. She offered the same chance to Willow, but Willow refused, stating that she didn't even like fighting. After she walked with Timber back to the cave, she stated cryptically that she had "things to do" and simply left. This wasn't the first time Ivy acted mysteriously; she was often known to disappear for a long periods of time, though she always gave notice before doing so. Ivy would have little furthur part until her pack's first battle. During this, she was a terror to the other side, a merciless and forbidable fighter. She had her first kill during this time, and then added a second to it, even though the rest of her pack had none (at least not directly; Snowflake and Willow managed to inflict enough wounds to kill one). She also displayed moves that she could not have learned from Sky - one rogue said she couldn't have learned them from a pack wolf at all. She also showed her first true emotion during this scene, when she became angry at a rogue who attempted to tell her that his group wasn't always bad. Predictably, she suffered the fewest injuries of the pack; she was the quickest to heal, though most of them were okay to walk around two weeks later. On one, very fateful night, all members of the pack except Willow and the unconscious Sea were restless, and out wandering alone through the forest. Ivy was among them when she heard a wolf cry out for help. Afraid that it was a member of her pack - she had already realized that she didn't know where Timber was - she rushed to the aid of the wolf, encountering Snowflake on the way. It was Ivy who first discovered Timber's body. Ivy was crushed by Timber's death, and in this part behaved much more like the rest of the pack than she previously had. She grieved him heavily, and breaking the news to Willow and Sea only made her sadder. To keep from dwelling on it too much, she turned to analyzing everything she could about his death. In doing this, she reached a very hard truth: that whoever killed him had to have been a member of Northwood. She told Snowflake of this, but no one else, because she didn't want to alert them to her suspicions. She began to keep a close watch on the rest of her pack, Storm and Pine in particular. Wandering in the forest later, she encountered a rogue. She fought him, won, and pinned him down; however, with that done, she was stuck. He had information she needed and therefore could not be killed. The best solution was to torture him, but torture was one of the few things Ivy did not know how to do. As she was trying to decide what to do, she was quietly surrounded by other rogues. She failed to notice until she looked up and met a pair of grey eyes in the nearby underbrush. Ivy, in all her logical mindset, was paralyzed by the gaze; she backed up, thinking only of retreating, and was not broken out of it until another rogue attacked her and forced her to look elsewhere. She tried to fight back, but was quickly overpowered and knocked unconscious. She awoke in an unfamiliar cave, with the grey-eyed wolf standing over her. After implying that he was going to torture her, it faded to black.